1. Technical Field
The present invention relates to a recording apparatus and a recording method.
2. Related Art
An ink jet printer forms dots on a printing medium by relatively moving the printing medium (recording medium) and a recording head in which nozzle arrays for, for example, cyan (C), magenta (M), yellow (Y), and black (K) are lined up in a relative movement direction to discharge ink droplets (liquid droplets) from nozzles according to data representing presence or absence of a dot for each pixel. Examples of the ink jet printer include a line printer and a serial printer.
When ink droplets are not discharged from nozzles due to clogging and the like or are discharged but do not draw correct trajectories, this may cause a “dot missing” area that is formed by pixels where dots are not formed being connected in the relative movement direction and cause white streaks in a printing image. Particularly, streaks of the color of the printing medium tend to stand out when failed nozzles that fail to discharge ink droplets exist in the nozzle array for black (K). To suppress such streaks, it is considered that other nozzles form dots to complement dots that are to be formed by failed nozzles for K. However, there is no proposal for an appropriate technology for complementing dots that are to be formed by failed nozzles for K when the recording head is inclined.
The subject matter disclosed in JP-A-2008-155382 deals with an image forming method, although not a technology for complementing dots that are to be formed by failed nozzles, that decreases visibility of non-uniform streaks when the recording head is mounted in an inclined manner. The image forming method disposes subnozzle arrays for the nozzle arrays for only C and M among CMYK in the ink jet recording head and measures the amount of inclination of the recording head to deposit droplets with a part of or all subnozzles included in the subnozzle arrays instead of depositing droplets with a part of or all main nozzles included in the main nozzle arrays when the obtained amount of inclination exceeds a threshold.
JP-A-2008-155382 does not have a suggestion for complementing dots that are to be formed by failed nozzles and does not have a description for depositing droplets with subnozzles for K. In addition, preparing subnozzles in the recording head as a measure against the inclining of the recording head leads to an increase in cost. Therefore, referring to the technology disclosed in JP-A-2008-155382 does not reach an appropriate technology for complementing dots that are to be formed by failed nozzles for K when the recording head is inclined.
The problem described above also resides in various recording apparatuses.